The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2001) Vol.

XXXIX

Tragedy, Dialectics, and Differancee

On Hegel and Derrfda'
Karin de Boer
University ofAmsterdam

1. Introduction
In his recent article "Genuine Gasche (Perhaps)," Geoffrey
Bennington quite vehemently criticizes Gasche for claiming in
both The Tain of the Mirror and in Inventions of Difference that
Derrida straightforwardly "belongs to philosophy.'? Bennington
here argues against Gasche that deconstruction is precisely
intended to destabilize the opposition between that which is
properly philosophical and that which is not and that Derrida's
texts for that reason time and again transgress the purported
border between philosophy and literature. Whereas Gasche
maintains that Derrida's work should primarily be read against
the backdrop of the history of philosophy, Bennington holds that
Derrida's multiple readings of texts from the philosophical
tradition do not so much oblige us to turn to the same
philosophical texts as open up the possibility of "different debts
and engagements." I do not wish in any way to deny that the
literary, playful, and unpredictable commentaries advocated by
Bennington are in line with one of the strands of Derrida's
texts. Rather, it seems to me that the positions taken up by
Gasche and Bennington represent opposed determinations of
the text as such, to both of which Derrida's writings seek
simultaneously to do justice. This does not mean that they
achieve a perfect synthesis of philosophical depth and literary
playfulness but, on the contrary, that the two sides at once
enhance and thwart each other. I will argue in this article that
it is precisely this dynamic that is at issue in deconstruction.
Although I agree with Bennington that one cannot reduce
Derrida's work to its philosophical strand alone, I would
maintain that in order to clarify what is at stake in Derrida's
deconstruction of traditional oppositions such as those between

Karin de Boer is Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of

Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. She is the author of
Thinking in the Light of Time: Heidegger's Encounter with Hegel
and of various articles on German Idealism, Phenomenology, and
Deconstruction.

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philosophy and literature, thought and writing, or the 'one' and

its 'other', one is obliged to address the implicit 'logic' that I
believe animates Derrida's effort to radically criticize the basic
presuppositions of Western thought.
I thus basically agree with Gasche that it is important to
elucidate Derrida's work by tracing the ways in which it
radically transforms and displaces certain schemes inherited
from the philosophical tradition. In the introduction of The Tain
of the Mirror, Gasche asserts that "Derrida's inquiry into the
limits of philosophy is an investigation into the conditions of
possibility and impossibility of a type of discourse and ques-
tioning that he recognizes as absolutely indispensable."4
Accordingly, deconstruction shows how metaphysical concepts
such as truth or identity "draw their possibility from that which
ultimately makes them impossible.:" Arguing that Derrida is
basically concerned with the possibility and impossibility of
self-reflection," Gasche focuses on Derrida's relation to the
philosophy of reflection, which culminates in Hegel's speculative
science. Since Hegel convincingly criticized philosophers like
Kant who interpreted the possibility of reflection in terms of the
opposition between subject and object, Gasche claims that "all
criticism of reflection must take its standards from the
Hegelian project and must measure up to the speculative solu-
tion given by Hegel."? Although I completely endorse Gasche's
demand that contemporary philosophy not relapse from the
results achieved by Hegel, I do not share his view that decon-
struction pertains exclusively or even primarily to the aporias
and contradictions inherent in philosophical texts." Rather, I
would maintain that Derrida's texts are ultimately concerned
with a dynamic that both underlies and undermines all human
efforts-not only those of philosophy-to establish a domain
that guarantees the possibility of identity, self-actualization,
truth, purity, and so on. To my mind, philosophical texts merely
exemplify the prevailing incapacity of human life as such--if I
may put it this way-to face the persistent threat of this self-
undermining dynamic. Although Gascho mentions that Hegel
breaks away from the philosophy of cognition and knowledge,"
his focus on the (imjpossibility of pure self-reflection tends to
confine his discussion of the relation between Hegel and
Derrida to its epistemological layers."
The Tain of the Mirror analyzes a plurality of origirial
syntheses-called infrastructures-which Derrida develops in
order to uncover "an alterity which forever undermines, but also
makes possible the dream of autonomy achieved through a
reflexive coiling upon self,"!' Despite the irreducible plurality of
infrastructures such as 'writing', 'trace', or 'supplement', Gasche
considers all of them to constitute modes of an originary
difference that simultaneously makes it possible and impossible
for thinking to achieve concrete unity and autonomy." The

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figure of a structure which at once makes possible and impos-

sible whatever human beings seek to achieve has acquired a
certain self-evidence in recent studies of Derrida. In this article,
however, I will argue that in order to understand philosophi-
cally what Derrida means by differance-s-eivi the self-under-
mining dynamic that it entails-it is imperative to go back to
Hegel's conception of difference and its function in processes of
self-actualization. The interpretation of the relation between
Hegel and Derrida that I propose differs from Gasche's in that I
consider the idea of philosophical self-reflection to be just one
instance of the all-too-human effort to suppress the under-
mining effects of difference, Thus moving away from the
epistemological context of The Tain of the Mirror, I will
investigate the 'logic' that inspires the epistemological no less
than the ethical questions pertinent to Derrida's work as a whole.
One possible way of approaching Derrida's relation to Hegel
would obviously consist in an analysis of Hegel's conception of
difference and contradiction in the Science of Logic. However,
since these logical concepts orient all of his analyses, I have
chosen to focus on less abstract aspects of Hegel's philosophy.
His conception of tragedy will be taken as an example that
might clarify the irreducible difference between difference, on
the one hand, and a difference that constitutes a necessary, but
subordinate, moment in any process of self-actualization on the
other. Moreover, by considering tragedy, I will also be able to
draw attention to the ethical implications of deconstruction. In
order to understand Derrida's relentless attempt to reveal the
bounds of the history of metaphysics, however, I will begin by
addressing one of the philosophers who first set the stage for
this history, that is, Aristotle. It was Aristotle who, so to speak,
first invented the concept of self-actualization, and his analyses
of movement and development were doubtlessly decisive for
Hegel's speculative interpretation of the history of spirit. These
two detours should allow me to interpret Derrida's philosophy
as an articulation of the tragic and radically finite character of
human life and human history. My approach to Derrida is
perhaps even further removed from Bennington's than Gasche's
interpretation is, in that it attempts to interpret deconstruction
as a whole in the light of one single basic principle. I hope,
however, that my repetition of this most philosophical gesture
will clarify, among other things, why it is that Derrida
constantly lets the philosophical impetus of his writings be
interrupted by a certain literary playfulness, a playfulness that
to my mind belongs to deconstruction as much as deconstruction
belongs to philosophy.
2. Derrida's Logic of Differ'ance
In one of the interviews published in Positions in 1972,
Derrida remarks that the silent letter 'a' in the word difference

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refers to the incessant work of a strange 'Iogic"." Many of

Derrida's texts attest to this strangeness, and many interpre-
tations have stressed the impossibility of reducing these texts
to a straightforward philosophical content, structure, or scheme.
I believe, however, that the apparent strangeness of Derrida's
thought should not dissuade us from inquiring into what is
logical in the strange logic of differance. Although Derrida
radically criticizes the attempt of traditional philosophy to rely
on an ultimate, stable principle that grounds both reality itself
and our knowledge of it, he would not hesitate to admit that his
own thinking remains, at least to a certain extent, dependent on
something like such a basic principle. I wish to argue that
Derrida, just as Aristotle, Hegel, and many others, still bases
his analyses on a principle that could be called 'logical' and that
he considers to underlie both human life and its efforts to
interpret itself." One way of articulating this principle might be
the following: whenever something, whatever it is, seeks to
actualize itself, the very means on which it depends for its
actualization will simultaneously threaten to make this
actualization impossible. This principle thus allows us to under-
stand everything that is or occurs as essentially threatened by
that which first opens up the possibility of its actualization.
Let me give an example. Words can only receive meaning by
virtue of their difference from all the other words that together
constitute a specific language. Yet the differencing force that
makes it possible for words to differ from one another and
hence to become meaningful is such that these words can never
once and for all acquire a fixed or univocal meaning: words are
incessantly forced to become different from what they are, and
no interpretation is able to control this proliferation of
mearrings.t" This does not mean, of course, that Derrida denies
the possibility of using words in such a way that they make
sense. We all know that they generally do, and in most cases we
all know in which cases language is used in an ambiguous or
distorted way. Derrida's emphasis on the unstable character of
language is rather meant, I think, to indicate that all human
efforts to constitute meaningfulness and coherence are ulti-
mately dependent on something that at once underlies and
undermines these efforts. Difference is one of the many names
that Derrida chooses for the differencing force by virtue of
which nothing can remain identical to itself or be present at
itself, yet without which nothing could even begin to take shape
or accomplish itself.
Although I do not claim that all aspects of Derrida's work
can be traced back to this meaning of differance, I will try to
sketch out how difference constitutes a radical modification of
the principle of self-actualization that according to Hegel
animates life, history, and the history of philosophy. As I see it,
Derrida bases his analyses on a principle of movement that is

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 Tragedy, Dialectics, and Difference

not only grafted onto Hegel's but also undermines the basic
presuppositions of his speculative science. In the essay
entitled "Differance" and in various other texts, Derrida
remarks in this respect that what he calls difference has a
profound affinity with Hegelian discourse and is, up to a
certain point, unable to break with it. On the other hand,
however, he holds that this differance entails a radical
displacement of Hegelian discourse:

[Dl ifferance, thus written, although maintaining relations of

profound affinity with Hegelian discourse (such as it must be
read) is also, up to a certain point, unable to break with that
discourse (which has no kind of meaning or chance); but it can
operate a kind of infinitesimal and radical displacement of it. 16

Difference is, as Derrida remarks in Positions, "the limit, the

interruption, the destruction of the Hegelian sublation wher-
ever it operates."!" I take this to mean that Hegel can only
acknowledge difference, negation, and contradiction insofar as
they enable something to accomplish itself: in order to actualize
itself, something must distinguish itself from itself in such a
way that the other of itself can serve as the means of its self-
actualization. Since it is, I think, primarily this idea of self-
actualization that constitutes the target of Derrida's decon-
struction, we cannot avoid turning to Hegel if we wish to better
understand Derrida. In Positions Derrida considers this a
difficult and in a certain way interminable task:
Since it is still a question of elucidating the relationship to
Hegel-a difficult labor, which for the most part remains before
us, and which in a certain way is interminable ... -I have
attempted to distinguish difference (whose a marks, among other
things, its productive and conflictual characteristics) from
Hegelian difference, and have done so precisely at the point at
which Hegel, in the greater Logic, determines difference as
contradiction only in order to resolve it, to interiorize it, to lift it
up ... into the self-presence of an onto-theological or onto-
teleological synthesis. 18

As I noted in the introduction, Hegel's conception of self-

presence and self-actualization goes back to the metaphysical
interpretation of movement that we find in Aristotle. That is
why I will first turn to the philosopher to whom Hegel is
indebted for so many of his speculative insights.

3. Aristotle and Hegel on

Movement and Time
Aristotle is the first philosopher to systematically
investigate the various possible modes of movement proper to

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transient beings. In order to comprehend these modes of

movement, he introduces the distinction between the capacity
or possibility (dunamis) of bringing about or undergoing a
change, on the one hand, and the actualization tenergeiai of this
possibility on the other. Thus, a white surface has the capacity
of becoming red, and being-red is, in this case, the actualization
of this possibility. Things also have the capacity of being moved
from one place to another or of moving themselves. Aristotle
emphasizes, however, that the difference between dunamis and
energeia does not exclusively pertain to locomotion but to all
kinds of changes. Beings come into being and pass away, and
they may change with respect to their position, quality,
quantity, and so on. According to Aristotle, in all these cases it
is the dunamis that causes something to overturn into some-
thing else or into the same thing as other." In other words, a
painter has the capacity of causing the change of a white sur-
face by painting it red, but he can only do this insofar as the
white surface has in itself the capacity of undergoing the
process of becoming red. And even in the case of an animal that
moves itself forward, one should distinguish between the
animal insofar as it moves itself and the animal insofar as it is
being moved; the animal is, as it were, divided within itself into
an active, animating part and a passive part, that is to say, into
a soul and a body. Precisely because the difference between
these two aspects shows forth more clearly in changes brought
about by human beings, Aristotle seems to have a preference for
examples taken from the region of human affairs. It is impor-
tant, however, that Aristotle understands all possible modes of
movement as based on the difference between dunamis and
energeia. The meaning of this difference exceeds the limits of
the Physics and also plays a crucial part in Aristotle's inter-
pretation of human life and human thinking.
Living beings are distinguished from other beings by
containing the cause of their movement within themselves. This
holds not only for animals, which are able to move themselves,
but also for the germ that is capable of developing into a plant.
The difference between dunamis and energeia thus allows
Aristotle to generally distinguish between movements that are
brought about by something other than themselves, on the one
hand, and movements that contain their cause within them-
selves on the other. Only insofar as a movement is animated by
its proper dunamis is it free from chance and arbitrariness. An
acorn only depends to a certain extent on external circum-
stances like water, earth, and light to develop into an oak tree.
Although such circumstances do make possible the actual
development of the acorn, they by no means determine whether
the germ develops into an oak tree or into a birch. When, on the
other hand, the same acorn is picked up by a random passer-by,
this acorn is not itself the cause of its change of position.

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 Tragedy, Dialectics, and Differance

Now the difference between a movement that has its cause

outside of itself and a movement that contains its cause within
itself allows Aristotle to order the different kinds of beings in a
hierarchical way. The acorn can be kicked away, but it has in
itself the possibility of developing into an oak tree. The tree
that results from this development is no absolute result, how-
ever, but has in itself the possibility of being sawn up into
planks. When looking at a tree with a carpenter's eye, one will
see the wood as a potential table. From his perspective, the tree
only reaches its true destination in the table which no one but a
carpenter can make out of it. Hence the tree also remains to a
certain extent dependent on a principle of movement that is
external to it. The tree has the passive possibility of being sawn
up into planks but is incapable of actualizing this possibility of
its own accord.
Moreover, both the tree and the table are subject to the
ravages of time. In the section of the Physics devoted to an
analysis of time, Aristotle remarks twice that time not so much
causes beings to come into being but is rather the cause of their
decay." One might explain this in the following way. Although
the development of the germ into a plant necessarily occurs in
time, this development is not determined by time but exclu-
sively by the proper principle of the plant. The oak gradually
actualizes its proper form and remains identical to itself
throughout the different phases of its development. Now time
might be conceived as the differencing force that causes all
finite beings to become different from what they are. Although
Aristotle is mainly concerned with a scientific interpretation of
time, he nevertheless seems to understand time as the principle
by virtue of which finite beings are subject to changes that they
cannot bring about themselves. Decay and withering take place,
then, when the proper principle of the plant has as it were
exhausted itself and yields to the time that incessantly annuls
the proper form of things. When at a certain point the proper
energy of a tree no longer suffices to resist the force of time, it
will no longer be able to preserve its proper form. This also
holds for tables and other artifacts: they must sooner or later
lose their form and return to ashes.
All finite beings thus appear to be determined by a proper
principle of movement on the one hand and the external force of
time on the other. Aristotle states, however, that there are two
kinds of beings that are, each in its own way, not determined by
time. The planets, first, eternally and imperturbably, follow
their own course. Their circular movements cannot be disturbed
by external influences. Second, human beings are distinguished
from all other beings in that they can overcome their
dependence on what they are not by means of their thinking
and ethical acting. Human beings are capable of thinking and
acting in such a way that their movements are exclusively

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determined by the ultimate principle of movement, that is, by

the Good as such. Although the finite life of embodied human
beings necessarily takes place between birth and death, their
thoughts and deeds allow them to lift themselves above their
finitude and thus to annul the power of time. Since philosophy
is the mode of thinking that is the least determined by the
other of itself, that is, by the world insofar as it is given
through sense-perception, Aristotle considers philosophy itself
to be the highest mode of movement granted to human beings.
When contemplating the eternal principles that ground both
thinking and reality, the movement of thinking no longer has to
seek a further fulfillment. It is no longer possible here to
distinguish between the movement itself and its end; pure
contemplation has achieved its ultimate end and hence has
overcome all restlessness." This means that philosophy is, more
than all other modes of knowledge, capable of overcoming the
differencing force of time.
Aristotle mal have introduced the distinction between
dunamis and energeia primarily to comprehend the different
modes of movement and change on the basis of one underlying
principle, but this distinction subsequently seems to acquire a
fundamental ontological bearing. As this distinction allows
Aristotle to order the different movements according to the
extent to which they have their principle within themselves, it
also allows him to hierarchically order the different kinds of
beings according to the extent to which they are capable of such
self-depending movements.
From Augustine onwards, Christian metaphysics takes over
this ontological order, albeit that philosophy now must share its
place with faith or must even allow faith to take its place.
Notwithstanding Kant's critique of the scholastic tradition that
largely determined Western philosophy up to at least the
seventeenth century, Hegel explicitly adopts the Aristotelian
distinction between dunamis and energeia to comprehend the
inner movement of life and thought ." Contrary to Aristotle,
however, Hegel finds himself at the end of a long history. He
realizes that this specific position demands not only that one
comprehend the inner, underlying principle of the totality of
beings but also that one reflect on the essential movement that
grounds the history of human culture. Like Aristotle, Hegel
considers self-actualization to be the most essential and most
perfect movement. The first and final philosophical self-
reflection of history that Hegel claims to accomplish therefore
again starts out from the Aristotelian distinction between
dunamis and energeia. I wish to emphasize that Hegel would
never deny that our history is marked by all kinds of arbitrary
events that are causally related to one another," What interests
him, however, is history insofar as it contains the principle of
its development within itself, that is, insofar as it increasingly

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actualizes its proper principle in and by means of the sequence

of external events, without therefore being determined by them.
Just as the acorn depends on water, light, and earth to develop
into an oak tree, this essential history depends on causally
connected facts and on the time that constitutes the precon-
dition of their sequence. Not the actual events, but the proper,
inner principle of history determines its course insofar as it can
be the object of thought.
While nature must eternally repeat itself and always remain
subjected to time, Hegel takes the history of spirit to consist in
the increasing actualization of a freedom that, as a germ, from
the very outset inheres in human spirit and gradually unfolds
itself. This self-actualization of the principle of self-determina-
tion takes place in every mode of human culture but preemi-
nently in religion, art, and philosophy. Since the history of spirit
is essentially animated by a principle that it contains within
itself, these manifestations of spirit become ever less dependent
on the externality of time and space that they nevertheless
need in order to actually accomplish themselves. Although this
view of the history of spirit is far from tragic, Hegel considers
Greek tragedies to express a certain mode of the movement in
which the absolute substance determines itself by dividing itself
against itself and subsequently destroying the seeming indepen-
dence of its different sides. I will therefore briefly consider
Hegel's conception of the history of spirit and its relation to his
interpretation of tragedy.
4. Hegel's Interpretation
of History and Tragedy
In his courses on the philosophy of history, Hegel repeatedly
refers to world history as the 'stage' or 'theatre' of spiritY
Spirit, itself the inner principle of this history, enters the scene
as soon as nature has developed into human consciousness and
human beings begin to create states." Hardly visible at first,
spirit somehow begins to set its own stage; once this is done,
world history can begin to develop and become the domain of
spirit's spectacular and ever increasing self-actualization. This
spectacle seems to have reached its final scene with Hegel's own
philosophy. We have not come too late, however, to watch the
play itself. As the final scene consists precisely in the summar-
izing repetition of all the preceding scenes, Hegel can raise the
curtains once more and invite us to watch world history
developing from one scene into another, heading towards spirit's
final self-reconciliation." The repetition of world history that
Hegel presents to us is such that its inner movement can only
now be truly understood as spirit's self-actualization in time.
Only now does it become possible to understand how spirit
actualizes itself on the stage of history by dividing itself into
different substantial values and into different actors. What is

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more, spirit stages itself in such a way that it not only becomes
the actor but also the spectator of its own acting. Both its acting
and its self-spectating can take place only in and through us,
finite human beings; spirit needs us to enact itself, to divide
itself against itself, to watch its own struggles, conflicts, and
declines, and to increasingly comprehend their inner logic.
It is not evident, however, what kind of play spirit is staging
for us and for itself. Is our history to be understood as a
tragedy, a tragicomedy, a never-ending soap opera, an absurd
play, or as yet something else? Needless to say, many philoso-
phers would deny the possibility of any encompassing compre-
hension of the true nature of history. Most of them would agree,
though, that Hegel's interpretation of history as the stage of
spirit's increasing self-actualization can no longer be main-
tained. Spirit's speculative self-comprehension seems to ensue
from a certain blindness to the movement of its own history. It
is this blindness, I think, that Derrida's texts time and again
try to address.
According to Hegel, every historical culture has specific
possibilities of interpreting itself. The spirit of a certain culture
gains insight into itself through art, religion, or philosophy. This
self-elucidation of a culture constitutes in fact the core of
history itself. In the Phenomenology of Spirit and in various
other texts, Hegel analyzes the essence of natural ethical life
tSittlichheit) by starting out from Greek tragedy, notably from
the Antigone. If it is true that this first mode of ethical life has
reached its full bloom in Greek culture, and if it is also true
that the Sophoclean tragedies most eminently interpret this
life, Hegel seems right to base his philosophical interpretations
of ethical life on these tragedies. It should be emphasized that
the Phenomenology of Spirit does not at all intend to offer an
interpretation of Sophocles' Antigone. Hegel only goes along
with what he considers an eminent instance of the self-
interpretation of Greek culture at the level of the arts in order
to uncover the conflict that constitutes the core of the Antigone
as a mode of the self-differentiating dynamic of the absolute
concept.
Hegel makes clear, however, that tragedy cannot serve as a
basis for the interpretation of his own time, let alone for the
interpretation of history as such. Because individual self-
consciousness had hardly begun to develop in this period, both
Greek ethical life and its tragic self-interpretation have a
limited reach. According to Hegel, Greek culture destroyed itself
by the unavoidable emergence of a conflict between the
different ethical values that from the very outset inhered its
ethical life. This destruction prepares the way for an
organization of society based on the rights of the individual as
an abstract person (the Roman Empire}." The one-sided
character of this self-organization of society yields in its turn a

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mode of spirit that sublates the opposition between a society

founded on substantial ethical powers and a society founded on
the abstract rights of individuals: "It is out of this night of pure
self-certainty that the ethical spirit is resurrected as a form
freed from nature and its own immediate existence."28 Hegel
considers this resurrection of spirit to take place in and as
Christianity.
While Hegel takes the view that art as such is a medium
through which spirit can gain only a limited insight into itself,
he considers religion to be better capable of reflecting the true
nature of spirit it self' " According to Hegel, the history of
religion culminates in Christianity; the idea of a God who
divides himself into a father and a son in order to finally recon-
cile himself-in an individual human being-with his own
otherness, most appropriately represents the dynamic structure
of absolute spirit itself. The Christian principle of life, death,
and resurrection allows Hegel to understand his time, or at
least his own philosophy, as the final scene of spirit's history as
such, that is to say, as the final scene of its self-comprehension
and self-reconciliation. Thus, while Greek tragedy can only
serve to philosophically elucidate the essential conflicts of
ethical life, Hegel considers the Christian scene to offer the
most adequate expression of spirit's incarnation in world
history as such."
It is not surprising therefore that Hegel, when interpreting
Greek tragedy, already emphasizes that the deepest moral
collisions entail the possibility of their reconciliation." In most
of the tragedies, the heroes lose their lives before realizing the
one-sidedness of the ethical value they lived for. Consolation
may come too late for them but not for those who watch the
play. They might begin to see how the ethical substance of their
culture divides itself into a human and a divine law, how this
division necessarily leads to a conflict between the heroes who
identify with one of these laws and, finally, how this conflict
necessarily leads to the sublation of these laws into their higher
unity.32 Hegel once remarks that only the scene of the dying
Oedipus foreshadows a true, that is to say Christian, mode of
reconciliation: self-conscious, Oedipus resigns himself to his fate
and renders himself to the gods." In most cases, however, Hegel
starts out from his beloved Antigone to elucidate the nature of
ethical life. I will briefly explain why this play serves this
purpose so well.
Hegel considers the conflict between Antigone's urge to bury
her brother and Creon's general prohibition of doing so to
unfold the necessary conflict between the hidden law of blood
relationship and the public law of the state, a conflict he holds
to characterize Greek ethical life as such. It is crucial that both
characters identify with an ethical power or substance that is in
itself justifiable. Neither Antigone nor Creon is carried away by

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mere passions; they believe that their actions are good in

themselves. The truth of ethical life, however, can only appear
when both the law of the polis and the law of the blood no
longer maintain their own absoluteness and mutually reveal
their one-aidednees.t" The ensuing sublation of the different
sides of the ethical substance into a unity that restores their
primordial balance coincides, in the play, with the death of the
characters; their lives apparently depend completely on the
identification with one of the ethical laws. Human beings are
born, as it were, with a natural blindness to the whole of the
ethical suhstance.i" Thus, according to Hegel, women will
naturally identify with the dark law of the family, whereas men
will turn themselves to the public law of the state." A blindness
they did not choose, then, animates their actions and brings
about the conflict between the two sides of the ethical substance
itself. This means that the one ethical substance or essence
itself-the Good-needs finite human beings to divide itself
within and against itself, to split itself into a principle of
generality and a principle of individuality and to let the two
principles fight one another until they are forced to surrender
to the sublating power of the ethical substance itself. It is only
in and by means of this conflictual movement that the ethical
substance can reach its own truth and reconcile itself with
itself: "The more profound tragic reconciliation ... pertains to
the emergence of the specific ethical substantial powers out of
their opposition to their true harmony.":" As I said before, the
limits of Greek culture hardly permit this reconciliation to take
place in a self-conscious subject. Spirit, on its journey through
history, will have to take various detours to become fully
conscious of itself, that is, to become subject. The countering
forces of generality and individuality already embodied in the
laws of Creon and Antigone may only then find their true
reconciliation.
Hegel maintains that the self-interpretation that is articu-
lated in Greek tragedy has a limited reach and that only
Christianity can serve as a model for understanding the
dynamic principle of the history of spirit as such. If we are to
deny our history its dialectical structure and to defend the
eternal irreconcilability of its countering tendencies, we might
turn once more to the structure of tragedy. The relation between
the Christian and the tragic model as Hegel conceives it might
thus be reversed: the Christian model might be reinterpreted as
a limited historical mode of spirit's self-interpretation, that is to
say, as an interpretation in which spirit is no longer and not yet
able to face its innermost fini tude.:" And if the history of
philosophy constitutes the highest mode of spirit's self-
interpretation, then this history in particular would owe its
possibility to a certain blindness. I am not sure, however,
whether the issue of reconciliation is the best starting point for

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understanding the tragic structure of history. It might be the

case that a reflection on tragedy in terms of the possible or
impossible reconciliation of contraries-such as generality and
singularity-remains too much indebted to the example of
AntigoneP I will therefore choose a somewhat different direc-
tion and, after some remarks on Hegel's appreciation of Oedipus
the King, try to elucidate a certain tragic structure that may be
found in this play.
For the most part, the chapter on ethical life in the Pheno-
menology of Spirit implicitly follows Antigone. Only once, when
Hegel is explaining how every ethical law has a counterpart
that initially must remain hidden from the acting person, is
Oedipus briefly allowed to appear on the stage.'? Reality does
not show itself as it is in and for itself, Hegel writes here; it
does not show the son that the man he kills is really his father
nor that the woman he marries is his mother. Although Oedipus
acts according to the law that at these moments seems most
appropriate, that is to say, public law, he should on both
occasions have followed the law of the blood, which is only
revealed to him after the outrageous acts have been committed.
But he could not know that at both times he was to have
followed the other law, the hidden one. Hegel suggests that
Oedipus had to act according to the one law that was disclosed
to him. Although a man, he should have honored the hidden law
of the blood instead. In Oedipus the King, sexual differences
apparently play no part in the ethical choices of the hero. That
is probably why Hegel never elaborates on the conflict between
the law of the polis and the law of the blood with respect to
Oedipus. Instead, he merely characterizes the play by the
collision between what Oedipus is consciously doing and what
remains hidden from him." Because Antigone from the outset is
conscious of the implications of her deed, Hegel considers her
moral consciousness more complete and her debt more pure.V
Hence, Oedipus the King is considered not to represent the most
adequate colliaion.:" I suppose that Hegel also esteems the
Antigone so highly because its tragic conflict is embodied by two
different people, identifying themselves with contrary moral
values. Although a tragedy of course needs different actors, I
believe such a division not to be essential to the tragic as such.
I would rather maintain that human life is tragic in itself and
that the invincible opponent that time and again will cross its
path is first of all itself. Oedipus's story might serve to elucidate
this.
As we all know, Oedipus's life is determined by the omen
that he is to kill his father and marry his mother. Just as his
parents had tried to save themselves and their son from this
fate, Oedipus devotes his life to escaping his gruesome destiny.
He thus gains power, wealth, and a wife. It is of great impor-
tance, I think, that he owes his ascent to the same omen that

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 Karin de Boer

predicted and finally effects his fall. Tragic catastrophes do not

stem from the outside world. The principle that grounds
Oedipus's life is such that from the very outset it threatens to
destroy him." Thus, the play seems to tell us that the unavoid-
able downfall always already indwells life and incessantly tends
to overturn its proper possibilities into their contrary. I do not
wish to deny that Hegel is aware of this tragic and finite
dynamic. He repeatedly states that everything that is finite has
the germ of its perishing within itself." The balance between
the two moral values in the polis, for instance, is doomed to be
destroyed because Greek ethical life is still determined by an
immediate, that is natural, relation to these values; Hegel calls
this immediacy the germ of the perishing of ethical life. 46
Besides, his courses on the philosophy of world history empha-
size that finite spirit is itself the enemy that hinders it from
attaining its goal." While spirit needs the externality which it
distinguishes of itself in order to accomplish itself, this
externality tends time and again to thwart spirit's accomplish-
ment. Hegel adds, however, that spirit must of necessity over-
come this inner hindrance. Or, to put it differently, the proper
dunamis of spirit may be thwarted by the means that it distin-
guishes from itself in order to actualize itself-such as the will,
the senses, discursive understanding-but ultimately guaran-
tees its actualization. Individual human beings may very often
let their ends be determined by these means instead of
determining them and, hence, be unable to achieve the neces-
sary self-overcoming of spirit. Yet Hegel will always consider
the failure of finite beings against the backdrop of an absolute
movement that actualizes itself by means of the very self-
destruction of the finite. The spirit, which enacts its own
development by dividing itself against itself and colliding with
its own otherness, ultimately has the power to reconcile itself
with itself and actualize itself as free subjectivity, that is to say,
as the highest mode of energeiar"
I agree with Hegel's speculative insight that every essential
movement is motivated by a principle that it contains within
itself. I also agree with Hegel that such movements, in order to
accomplish themselves, have to divide themselves against them-
selves and bring about a counterforce that necessarily thwarts
this very accomplishment. However, whereas Hegel takes the
view that any inner hindrance ultimately must and can be
overcome, I propose that this countering force be understood in
such a way that it does not necessarily result in reconciliation
but time and again both makes possible and tends to make
impossible such reconciliation. Thus, the issue is no longer
whether reconciliation does or does not of necessity take place.
Human life and its history will always strive for balance and
reconciliation. Yet, we might begin to see how the germ of life,
its innermost dunamis, engenders at once the possibility and

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 Tragedy, Dialectics, and Differance

the impossibility of its own accomplishment. Human life

accomplishes itself by virtue of that which threatens to make it
impossible. This, I think, is what is also at stake in Derrida's work.
5. Derrida and the
Essence of the Tragic
In Specters of Marx, Derrida refers once to the logic that
underlies this self-undermining dynamic as the essence of the
tragic or the irreparable tragedy." It is, however, rather seldom
that he explains what I take to be the core of deconstruction in
terms of the tragic. 50 As Derrida suggests in his recent text On
Hospitality, his hesitation in this respect seems to pertain to the
fact that Greek tragedies like Antigone not only expose the
inherent and unavoidable collision between two different laws
but also-at least to a certain extent, or at least according to
Hegel's interpretation-indicate a possible solution of that
collision." One could as well argue, however, that the essence of
the tragic does not lie in the possible dialectical sublation of a
conflict brought about by two contrary determinations of the
good but precisely in the way in which two contrary movements
need one another to accomplish themselves, while simultan-
eously tending to make the accomplishment of the other
impossible.
Derrida is as little as Hegel concerned with the way tragic
conflicts can be distributed over different characters. As we saw,
Hegel holds that it is the good itself that, in order to actually
accomplish itself, must divide itself within itself so as to enact
itself as specific (opposed) determinations of the good. We find a
similar, though not identical, approach in Derrida's remarks on
the tragic in On Hospitality. The absolute possibility of justice,
of unlimited hospitality, or however one chooses to name what
is good in itself, always needs certain specific laws, that is to
say, specific delimitations of the good, in order to actually
accomplish itself and become more than an empty ideal.P On
the other hand, however, these specific laws necessarily tend to
corrupt the very accomplishment of that justice. As Derrida
notes, the perfectibility of the specific laws is inextricably
intertwined with the pervertibility of justice as such. That which
radically threatens the innermost human possibilities is thus
nothing secondary, external, and accidental but emerges from
the very movement in which these possibilities attempt to
accomplish themselves.
Contrary to Hegel, Derrida does not conceive of this
essential pervertibility as a secondary moment of a movement
that, in the end, will necessarily actualize itself. In other words,
the difference between the absolute possibility of justice and the
specific laws on which it depends for its actualization is not a
difference that will necessarily result in that actualization. It is
here that we can see the infinitesimal, yet radical, difference

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 Karin de Boer

between Hegel's and Derrida's conceptions of difference. What

Derrida calls difference refers to a principle that constitutes at
once the condition of the possibility and of the impossibility of
any kind of self-actualization, that is to say, both the only
chance and the endless deferral of any self-presence. 53 The
character of differance

in no way implies that the deferred presence can always be found

again .... Contrary to the metaphysical, dialectical, "Hegelian"
interpretation of the economic movement of differance, we must
conceive of a play in which whoever loses wins, and in which one
loses and wins on every turn."

Just as words can only become what they should become, that
is, meaningful, by virtue of a differencing force that simul-
taneously prevents them from definitively achieving their aim,
every human undertaking is essentially threatened by the very
means that it needs in order to accomplish itself. If it is true
that Derrida thus tries to make us aware of the radical finitude
of human life and its self-interpretations, and if it is possible to
start out from the structure inherent in Greek tragedy to
articulate precisely a kind of principle that accounts for this
radical finitude, as I have tried to do, then it is not so strange,
perhaps, to interpret the principle that seems to guide Derrida's
analyses as accounting for the tragic character of all move-
ments enacted by human beings.
Derrida turns against Aristotle and Hegel in that he no
longer understands the finite character of beings as caused by
the fact that they occur in time and need matter in order to
actually take shape. Aristotle and Hegel acknowledge the
differencing force of time as a means that makes it possible for
beings to accomplish themselves but lets itself be sublated by
the even greater force of thinking, that is to say, by the prin-
ciple of self-actualization that culminates in speculative
thought. Derrida attempts to dislodge the basic frame of meta-
physics by indicating a differencing force that is more original
than time and even underlies the process of self-actualization
that Aristotle and Hegel consider to constitute the most essen-
tial rnovemen t.I" If one endorses the idea of such a primal
differencing force, it is no longer possible to distinguish between
a realm within which all finite beings are liable to change and
decay on the one hand and a process of pure, infinite self-
actualization on the other. If the innermost dunamis of human
life is in itself radically finite, then finitude can no longer be
assigned to one side of a two-sided reality, that is to say, to
external circumstances that do not infringe upon the eternal
and essential.
Derrida would say that the distinction between the infinite
and the finite that has from the outset allowed philosophy to

346
 Tragedy, Dialectics, and Differance

achieve certainty and stability is a trace that attempts to erase

itself as a trace: if followed, it leads us to a gesture that might
be considered to inaugurate culture as such, namely, the turn
away from the undermining force of difference or, for that
matter, from the tragic. 56 From Derrida's perspective, then,
philosophy rests on the effort to exclude this difference from the
domain of thought. Within that domain, difference can only be
acknowledged as something proper to finite beings or, at best,
as in Hegel's speculative science, as a subordinate moment in
the self-actualization of the absolute. One might even say that
this primal inhibition of difference first gives rise to what
Derrida calls the closure of metaphysics," that is to say, to the
domain within which thought can achieve knowledge of reality
and of itself by means of fixed oppositions such as infinite/finite,
idea/appearance, essential/accidental, subject/object, inside/
outside, truth/semblance, center/fringes, meaning/sign, necessity/
chance. The history of metaphysics thus attests to the sustained
effort to ward off the threat of the differencing force that time
and again returns to undermine its foundations.
In the Science of Logic (particularly in the second part,
entitled "Doctrine of Essence"), Hegel fundamentally criticizes
all modes of thinking that base their interpretation of reality as
such on these and similar oppositions. Despite the transcen-
dental revolution that they achieve, both Kant and Fichte are
considered to remain bound to the absolute opposition between
a finite reality and an infinite principle that will never fully
actualize itself in the realm of the finite. The Logic, on the
contrary, reinterprets oppositions such as that between the
finite and the infinite as one-sided moments of the one
movement in which the absolute concept actualizes its inherent
determinations. According to Hegel, the infinite is not opposed
to the finite but, rather, constitutes a general determination of
the absolute concept, a determination that unfolds itself by
dividing off the other of itself-the finite-and positing this
otherness over against itself. The inner movement of the
concept that unfolds in the Science of Logic subsequently
destroys the apparent absoluteness of the opposition between
the infinite and the finite in order to reestablish their initial
identity. 58 However, Hegel, can only achieve the sublation of
conceptual oppositions like this by conceiving of the finite, the
grounded, appearance, or semblance, as subordinate moments of
the movement in which the infinite, the ground, truth, or the
idea actualize their inner essence.
Not unlike Hegel, yet in a far more radical way, Derrida
holds that all efforts of thinking to make and maintain opposi-
tional distinctions rest on a certain blindness: "Hegel, through
precipitation, blinded himself to that which he had laid bare
under the rubric of negativity.'?" Hegel saw that the one,
whatever it is, must distinguish itself from itself in order to

347
 Karin de Boer

accomplish itself by means of the other of itself, but he was

blind to the way in which this other at the same time threatens
to make this very accomplishment impossible. Hegel saw that
both sides of an opposition must become moments within the
self-actualizing movement of the other, and he also saw that
these moments tend to resist their sublation, that is to say,
their becoming 'moment'. But he could only conceive this
resistance itself as secondary, that is to say, as subordinate to
the dialectical force of the concept.
In other words, Hegel at the most fundamental level of his
philosophy acknowledges difference as a necessary precondition
of any accomplishment of identity, sense, presence, and self-
presence.s? Self-determination is only possible through self-
differentiation. However, insofar as he determines this dif-
ferentiation as a movement in which the one necessarily
becomes opposed to the other of itself and hence is able to
sublate its internal contradiction, he, so to speak, tames the
primordial force of negativity, forcing it within the bounds of
dialectics. Glas relates this to the Christian phantasm of purity,
the immaculate conception eIC):

As soon as the difference is determined as opposition, no longer

can the phantasm (a word to be determined) of the Ie be
avoided: to wit, a phantasm of infinite mastery of the two sides
of the oppositional relation. '" All the oppositions that link
themselves around the difference as opposition (active/passive,
reasonlheart, beyondlhere-below, and so on) have as cause and
effect the immaculate maintainance of each of the terms, their
independence, and consequently their absolute mastery."

To be sure, Hegel admits that finite beings and historical events

are very often incapable of letting themselves be determined by
the dialectical force of the concept and hence remain subjected
to the differencing force of time. But precisely because he
distinguishes between the proliferating negativity proper to
time and the negating force of the absolute concept which of
necessity negates itself, he can maintain that movements
insofar as they are animated by this self-negating negation,
that is to say, by self-actualization, do not risk losing whatever
they seek to win.
Derrida seems to interpret the two modes of negativity
distinguished by Hegel as resulting from an exclusion of a
differencing force that in no way guarantees its self-sublation
and hence in no way guarantees the possibility of self-
presence.t" A philosophy that turns against the closure of
metaphysics in that it lets itself be guided by this differencing
force will no longer conceive of loss, meaninglessness, and
arbitrariness as secondary and concomitant moments, that is to
say, as effects that can be overcome in the process in which

348
 Tragedy, Dialectics, and Differance

something actualizes itself. This is not to say, however, that

Derrida simply defends a nihilistic or pessimistic position.
Generally we are perfectly capable of communicating with one
another and, undisturbed by differencing forces, of performing
the tasks that happen to be ours. But we will all agree that
things are more complicated when it comes to ethics, justice,
faith, love, or philosophy itself. No ethical deed can save itself
from becoming part of the logic of economic exchange, that is to
say, of the other of itself that it needs in order to accomplish
itself. That which radically threatens the innermost human
possibilities is not external and accidental but seems to emerge
from the very movement in which they attempt to accomplish
themselves. Thus, Derrida's perspective entails the impossibility
of choosing between optimism and pessimism precisely because
failure and loss constitute at once the chance and the deferral of
whatever one may seek to win. This 'at once' no longer obeys
the logical principle of noncontradiction; the 'either/or' distinc-
tion no longer constitutes the basis of the strange and distur-
bing logic of differance.
One might object to my presentation of this logic by saying
that it reduces Derrida's writings to just one more great
systematic narration. I agree that my emphasis on the logical
structure that I take to constitute Derrida's starting point
entails a certain one-sidedness. I have made a distinction
between the form and matter of his philosophy in order to focus
on the form, whereas Derrida himself radically criticizes
distinctions like this. It is true that an articulation of the
logical background of Derrida's thought fails insofar as it
cannot account for the way in which especially his later texts
let the unsettling force of difference do its work. Yet this
unavoidable failure may, at the same time, offer a chance to
understand how these texts attest to what they often no longer
articulate. Derrida's radicalization of the strange logic of
difference entails that the principle on which it is based is in
most of his later texts articulated even less than in some of his
early texts. Its strangeness seems to imply that it withdraws
more and more from the scene of conceptual philosophy, though
not without leaving traces. If, then, something like a logical
principle constitutes the germ of Derrida's writings, it is a germ
that from the outset contaminates what it seeks to unfold and,
while it loses what it seeks to win, does not lose its chance.

Notes
1 The research on which this article is based was made possible by
a grant from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).
2 G. Bennington, "Genuine Gasche (Perhaps)," in Interrupting
Derrida (London/New York: Routledge, 2000), 156; his earlier article
"Deconstruction and the Philosophers: The Very Idea" in Legislations:
The Politics of Deconstruction (London/New York: Verso, 1994) is

349
 Karin de Boer

written in very much the same vein.

3 Bennington, "Genuine Gasche (Perhaps)," 161.
4 R. Gasche, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of

Reflection (Cambridge, MAlLondon: Harvard University Press, 1986),

2. Since most of Gasche's main ideas are presented in this book, I will
not consider here its "companion volume of sorts" Inventions of
Difference: On Jacques Derrida (Cambridge, MAiLondon: Harvard
University Press, 1994). In the valuable collection of essays Hegel after
Derrida, edited by S. Barnett (London/New York: Routledge, 1998),
Barnett notes that the recent investigation of the philosophical
dimensions of Derrida's work in the United States-to which this
volume testifies-is largely due to the work of Gasche (298, n66).
According to Barnett, Derrida has shown that our culture has not yet
succeeded in "coming after" Hegel and that postmodern thought has
perhaps only been able to challenge Hegel with tools provided by
Hegel himself (2-3). It is therefore, in his view, "the task of decon-
struction to come to terms with Hegel" (26). I consider my interpre-
tation of the radical transformation of Hegel's conception of self-
actualization developed by Derrida to be one possible way of elabora-
ting this task. Another recent text that argues that we cannot
legitimately claim to have surpassed Hegel is L'avenir de Hegel.
Plasticite, temporalite, dialectique (Paris: Vrin, 1996) by C. Malabou.
She deploys the concept 'plasticity'-mentioned in the Phenomenology-
to show that Hegel's philosophy does not so much close off ever new
transformations but precisely allows such transformations to arise.
Very much aware of what deconstructive readings of Hegel might
achieve, her own aim is rather to show that Hegel's thought, by
offering resources that transgress some of its own premises, is much
less susceptible to deconstructive criticisms than one might have
thought. Although this is an interesting and provocative view, it seems
to me that Malabou develops her reading at the cost of those strands
in Hegel that do call for a fundamentally critical approach. In a way,
this also applies to J. L. Nancy's recent book Hegel. Llinquietude du
negatif (Paris: Hachette, 1997).
5 Gasche, The Tain of the Mirror, 175.
6 Ibid., 86.
7 Ibid., 75, cf. 77, 125.
B Ibid., 174.
9 Ibid., 62.
10 Derrida is said to inquire "into the principles of the ultimate
foundation of all possible knowledge" (ibid., 88, cf. 100, 143-144).
11 Ibid., 105.
12 Cf. ibid., 88, 155 (cf on 'infrastructures' 142, 147, 152).
13 J. Derrida, Positions (Paris: Editions de minuit, 1972), 54/
Positions, translated by A. Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1981),40.
14 I take the term 'logical' as used by Derrida to pertain to the
same level of thought as Hegel's Science of Logic, that is to say, to the
level of basic principles that precede the distinction between thinking
and reality insofar as it can be thought. This sense of logic has very
little to do with the discipline that investigates the formal rules of
thinking; in Hegel's Logic this formal logic constitutes only one aspect
of the movement in which the absolute concept actualizes itself. In a
recent article, H. Frank draws attention to the issue of logic in

350
 Tragedy, Dialectics, and Differance

Derrida's work. He argues that Derrida's thought no longer moves

within the space delimited by a logic based on the principles of
identity and bivalence but, rather, questions the decisions underlying
this delimitation as such (l05). Focusing on the logic of the supple-
ment, Frank emphasizes that the signifier both constitutes and
endangers the signified (108). Contrary to Frank, I maintain in this
article that it this internally divided dynamic itself that Derrida tries
to understand as 'logical'. Cf. H. Frank, "Logik der Dekonstruktion?
Derrida als Logiker," in Fremde Vernunft: Zeichen und Interpretation
IV, ed. by J. Simon and W. Stegmaier (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1998), 103-112. On Derrida and logic, see also M. Hobson, Jacques
Derrida: Opening Lines (London/New York: Routledge, 1998). Hobson's
interest is similar to Frank's in that she mainly addresses the relation
between Derrida's writing and twentieth century critical renewals of
classical logic. She argues that Derrida, resisting the claims of
classical logic, neither jettisons the entire function of contradiction nor
adheres to "some 'logic of the infinite'" (222). Again, I believe that in
order to provide a more positive account of Derrida's 'logic' one should
first turn to Hegel's overcoming of classical logic and then show how
Derrida turns against the way in which Hegel subordinates the
moment of contradiction to the infinite movement of the concept.
Hobson does mention that Derrida tries to escape the dialectical law
(155, 160), but I would maintain that terms such as 'displacement',
'play', and 'suspense', which Hobson here uses to distinguish Derrida's
writing from Hegelian dialectics, cannot in themselves sufficiently
account for the difference between Hegel and Derrida.
15 Cf. J. Derrida, "Differance," Marges de la philosophie (Paris:
Editions de minuit, 1972), 11-12"Differance," Margins of Philosophy,
translated by A. Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), lO-
ll.
16 Derrida, "Differance," Marges, 151Margins, 14; cf. "De l'economie
restreinte a I'econornie generale," Uecriture et la difference (Paris:
Editions du Seuil, 1967), 382"From Restricted to General Economy,"
Writing and Difference, translated by A. Bass (London: Routledgel
Kegan Paul, 1978), 260.
17 Derrida, Positions, 55/40-41.
18 Ibid., 59-60/43-44.
19 Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, 1046a 9-11; cf. Physics III, 200b 25-
201a 29.
20 Aristotle, Physics N, 221b 1; 222b 19-27.
21 Aristotle, Metaphysics XII, 1072b 19-24, 1074b 32-35.
22 Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber die Geschichte der
Philosophie I, 39/Lectures on the History of Philosophy I, translated by
E. S. Haldane and F. H. Simson (Lincoln/London: University of
Nebraska Press, 1995),20-21. Unless indicated otherwise, I will refer
to the following edition of Hegel's works: G. W. F. Hegel, Werke, edited
by E. Moldauer and K. M. Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1986).
23 Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen tiber die Philosophie der
Weltgeschichte, Band I: Die Vernunft in der Geschichte (Hamburg: Felix
Meiner Verlag, 1968), 76 (hereafter referred to as PW)/Lectures on the
Philosophy of World History: Introduction: Reason in History,
translated by H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1975), 66; because I refer to two different German editions, based on

351
 Karin de Boer

different manuscripts, I will hereafter refer to the English translation

alone as PWH. See on the problem of contingency the rich and well-
balanced study by B. Mabille, Hegel. l'Epreuue de la contingence (Paris:
Aubier, 1999).
24 "The principle of development further implies that an inner
determination, that is, a condition that is in principle present,
underlies the development and actualizes itself. This formal
determination is essentially the spirit, whose theatre, province, and
sphere of realisation is world history" (G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen tiber
die Philosophie der Geschichte, 75/PWH 126, translation completely
modified. Cf. PW 42/PWH 38.
25 PW 162-163/PWH 134-135.
26 "The latest philosophy contains therefore the preceding
philosophies, comprises all stages, and is the product and the result of
all preceding ones" (G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen tiber die Geschichte der
Philosophie III, 461/Lectures on the History of Philosophy III, 552-553,
translation modified).
27 Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Phiinomenologie des Geistes (Hamburg: Felix
Meiner Verlag, 1988), 316-320/Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by
A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 290-294, here-
after referred to as Phen.
28 Phen 461/426, translation slightly modified.
29 As is well-known the Phenomenology of Spirit draws on tragedy
both in the context of ethical life and in the context of religion in the
form of art. The sections on the ethical world and ethical action broach
the subject by philosophically elucidating the content of the self-
understanding reflected in Greek tragedies. The sections on religion in
the form of art, on the other hand, thematize the different modes of
the self-understanding of spirit insofar as these take place in the
element of the arts, in particular in the element of language (Phen
464/430). This illustrates that the overall structure of the
Phenomenology is not determined by the order of historical develop-
ments. Hegel considers Greek culture to be a culture which articulated
its relation to the absolute substance by means of the arts, in
particular by means of tragedy (cf 489/454). Just as tragedy reflects
the conflict between-and the downfall of-the ethical powers that
constituted Greek society, comedy reflects the emergence of the
individual who takes himself to be the center of the universe (488/
453). The "becoming human of the divine being" (ibid., translation
modified), which historically took place in the transition to Roman
culture and is reflected in comedy, is a precondition for the advent of
Christianity (494/459). Hegel apparently takes the view that as long
as religion occurs in the element of art it remains unable to articulate
the truth of religion; tragedy and comedy, as limited and comple-
mentary aesthetic forms of the self-understanding of spirit, must
therefore give way to revealed religion. Since my interest in Hegel's
interpretation of tragedy is here primarily systematic, I cannot
elaborate on the continuity and discontinuity of Hegel's views on
tragedy and the tragic throughout his career. See on this O. Poggeler,
"Hegel und die Griechische Tragtidie,' in Hegels Idee einer
Phiinomenologie des Geistes (Miinchen/Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber,
1973), 79-109; M. de Bestegui, "Hegel: or the Tragedy of Thinking," in
Philosophy and Tragedy, ed. by M. de Bestegui and S. Sparks (London:
Routledge, 2000), 11-37. In "Self-Dissolving Seriousness: On the Comic

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 Tragedy, Dialectics, and Differance

in the Hegelian Conception of Tragedy," in Philosophy and Tragedy,

38-56, Gasche argues that both tragedy and comedy show how the
characters, in acting, cannot sustain their one-sided beliefs and hence
dissolve themselves (51); by interpreting this structural aspect
common to tragedy and comedy as something that is comical rather
than tragic, Gasche in his turn seeks to dissolve the traditional
hierarchy of these genres.
30 Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopiidie der philosophischen Wissen-
schafteti III, 22-23/Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, translated by W.
Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 12-13 (§ 381, add).
31 "In tragedy the eternal substance of things emerges victorious in
a reconciling way, because it strips away from the conflicting
individuals only their false one-sidedness" (G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen
tiber die Asthetik III, 527, cf. 524/Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art II,
translated by T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19751,
1199, cf. 1197). Hereafter I will refer to this work as Aesth.
32 Cf. Phen 305-307/280-282.
33 "The higher reconciliation would consist in the subject's
disposition of one-sidedness being overcome, in its dawning conscious-
ness that it is in the wrong, and its divesting itself of its unrighteous-
ness in its own heart .... This higher reconciliation would make
external punishment and natural death superfluous.... Oedipus at
Colon us hints at reconciliation, and more precisely at the Christian
representation of reconciliation: Oedipus comes to honor among the
gods, the gods call him to them" (G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen tiber die
Philosophie der Religion II (vol , 4a), ed. by W. Jaeschke [Hamburg:
Frankfurt am Main, 1985], 558-559/Lectures on the Philosophy of
Religion, translated by R. F. Brown, et. al. [Berkeley: University of
California Press, 19881, 354-355; cf. Aesth III, 551/II, 1219).
34 "The original essence of tragedy consists then in the fact that
within such a conflict each of the opposed sides, if taken by itself, has
justification; while each can establish the true and positive content of
its own aim and character only by denying and infringing the equally
justified power of the other. For this reason both sides, insofar as they
constitute the sides of moral life, become involved in guilt" (Aesth III,
523/II, 1196, translation modified; cf. Phen 310/284-285).
35 "The ethical consciousness, however, has drunk from the cup of

absolute substance and has forgotten all the one-sidedness of being-

for-itself, of its ends and peculiar notions" When 307, cf. 305, 308/281
translation slightly modified, cf. 280, 282).
36 In fact, matters are more complicated, as Hegel points out in the
Aesthetics. Antigone not only identifies with one of the moral laws to
fight the other but is also bound to the opposite law: she is not only
her brother's sister, but also the woman who will marry Creon's son
Haemon, and who is subjected to the law of the polis. Creon, for his
part, not only rules Thebes but is also a father and husband; he has to
respect the "holiness of the blood" as well. Thus, both characters fight
an otherness that is part of their own life. This is fully in accordance
with Hegel's conception of dialectical development. Because the
Phenomenology of Spirit does not mention this issue, I suppose that
Hegel made this discovery at a later time and admired the Antigone
even more for it: "So there is immanent in both Antigone and Creon
something that in their own way they attack, so that they are gripped
and shattered by something intrinsic to their own actual being.... Of

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all the masterpieces of the classical and the modern world ... the
Antigone seems to me to be the most magnificent and satisfying work
of art of this kind" (Aesth III, 549-550/11, 1217-1218). These passages
also suggest that Antigone and Creon, and by implication women and
men in general, are not totally bound by the choices of ethical life that
nature imposes on them. In the Phenomenology Hegel states that
every natural ethical action has a criminal side "because it does not do
away with the natural allocation of the two laws to the two sexes, but
rather ... remains within the sphere of natural immediacy" When 308/
282). This implies that in the further development of ethical life the
natural allocation of the two laws to the two sexes is to be sublated,
that is to say, is to play only a subordinate part in social and moral
interaction. In Glas, Derrida refers to this passage without mentioning
that this kind of 'crime' is-according to Hegel-restricted to the
natural, immediate side of ethical action. Cf. J. Derrida, Glas (Paris:
Galilee, 1974), 192a-193a/Glas, translated by J. P. Leavey and R. Rand
(Lincoln and London: Nebraska University Press, 1986), 171a. For
general interpretations of Glas, see S. Critchley, "A Commentary Upon
Derrida's Reading of Hegel in Glas;" in Hegel after Derrida, ed. by S.
Barnett, 197-226; Gaschs, "Strictly Bonded," in Inventions of
Difference, 171-198.
37 Aesth III, 549/11, 1217, translation modified.
38 Cf. "What is the function of this Christian model? In what sense
is it exemplary for speculative onto-theology? Can this model be
circumscribed and displaced as a finite and particular structure, bound
to given historical conditions? Can a history different from the one
represented here be interrogated? Can the horizon be changed? the
logic?" (Derrida, Glas, 41a-42a/33a).
39 In "Hegel: Or the Tragedy of Thinking," M. de Beistegui asserts
that the tragic sustains speculative dialectics in that the latter
"affirms its positivity only in and through a total engagement in its
opposite" in order to become itself (28). On the other hand, the tragic
in Hegel remains subordinated to its speculative reconciliation (33).
Although I agree with this interpretation, it seems to me that de
Beistegui's conception of the tragic is not specific enough to sustain his
determination of the relation between the tragic and dialectics. See
also C. Menke, Tragodie im Sittlichen, Gerechtigkeit und Freiheit nach
Hegel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996). In his interesting study,
Menke examines how the tragic collision between the general and the
particular reappears in modernity as the insurmountable collision
between social justice and individual self-realization.
40 Phen 309/283.
41 Cf. Aesth I, 278-279/1, 213; Aesth III, 545/11, 1214.
42 Phen 309-310/284.
43 Aesth I, 279/1, 214; Aesth III, 544-545/11, 1213-1214.
44 This is the case at several levels: the course of Oedipus's life as a
whole is determined by the omen that made his father decide to rid
himself of his newborn son. Then again, when Oedipus the king is
confronted with the plague that torments Thebes, he ordains that the
murderer of Laius be found and banned from the city; Oedipus effort
to save his city by taking away the cause of the pollution thus causes
his ultimate downfall. Oedipus's fate is intimately related to that of
Thebes: he causes both its salvation and its decline. Cf. M. Dillon,
Politics of Security. Towards a Political Philosophy of Continental

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 Tragedy, Dialectics, and Differance

Thought (London/New York: Routledge, 1996), 162-198.

45 Cf. "[T]he being as such of finite things is to have the germ of
decease as their being-in-itself: the hour of their birth is the hour of
their death" (G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik I, 140/Science of
Logic, translated by A. V. Miller [Atlantic Highlands, NJ.: Humanities
Press International, 1989], 129, translation slightly modified). "But
where there is finitude, opposition and contradiction always break out
again fresh, and satisfaction does not get beyond being relative" (Aesth
I, 136/1, 99).
46 Phen 315/289.
47 PW 151-152/PWH 126-127.
48 "The true good, the universal and divine reason, also has the
power to fulfil its own purpose.... Philosophy teaches us that no force
can surpass the power of goodness or of God or prevent God's purposes
from being realised" (PW 77/PWH 66-67).
49 J. Derrida, Spectres de Marx (Paris: Galilee, 1993), 46/Specters of
Marx, translated by P. Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994),21.
50 See also: "To think the closure of representation is to think the

tragic: not as the representation of fate, but as the fate of

representation" (J. Derrida, "Le theatre de la cruaute et la cloture de
la representation," Uecriture et La difference [Paris: Editions du Seuil,
1967], 368/"The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation,"
Writing and Difference, translated by A. Bass [London: Routledge/
Kegan Paul, 1978],250). I would argue that Derrida here as in other
texts understands the closure of metaphysics, that is, of presentifying
representation, as the 'fate' that no thinking and writing can escape,
but that it nevertheless must and can attempt to resist. Insofar as
classical tragedies, representing actions as a whole, must contain a
plot that has a beginning, a middle, and an end; they might indeed be
considered incapable of rendering the radical undecidability that I
think Derrida holds to constitutes the core of the tragic.
51 J. Derrida, De l'hospitalite (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1997), 73-75/0f
Hospitality, translated by R. Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2000), 77-81.
52 Ibid., 75/79-81.
53 Cf. J. Derrida, "La pharmacie de Platon," La dissemination (Paris:
Editions du Seuil, 1972), 194/"Plato's Pharmacy," Dissemination,
translated by B. Johnson (London: Athlone Press, 1981), 168; Spectres
de Marx, 112/Specters of Marx, 65.
54 Derrida, "Differance,' Marges, 21/Margins, 20.
55 Derrida chooses to no longer give the name time to that which
brings about, maintains, and threatens from within that closure: "Time
is that which is thought on the basis of being as presence, and if
something-which bears a relation to time, but is not time-is to be
thought beyond the determination of being as presence, it cannot be a
question of something that still could be called time" (Derrida, "Ousia
et gramme," Marges, 69/Margins, 60).
56 One could argue with Nietzsche that Greek tragedies themselves
take on a form that makes it possible to endure the terrors of life;
hence they can be said to already consist in the effort to redirect and
tame, at least to a certain extent, the force of the negative. Cf. F.
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, translated by R.
Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 23. Cf.
"Although this 'radical' alterity does not present itself as such, the

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history of philosophy in its entirety is, indeed, the uninterrupted

attempt to domesticate it in the form of its delegates" (Gasche, The
Tain of the Mirror, 105).
57 Cf. Derrida, "Ousia et gramme," Marges, 58/Margins, 51.
58 "The infinite is ... the self-sublation of [the one-sided) infinite
and of the finite, as a single process-this is the true or genuine
infinite" (Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik I, 149, cf. 162/Science of Logic,
137, cf. 147; cf. for a similar interpretation of the relation between
ground and that which is grounded II, 84/447). According to Hegel's
early text Faith and Knowledge, Kant, Jacobi, and Fichte each in their
own way maintain the absolute opposition between the infinite and
the finite; hence their incapacity to determine the absolute otherwise
than as an empty and transcendent ideal. Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, "Glauben
und Wissen," Jenaer Schriften 1801-1807, 293-296/Faith and
Knowledge, translated by H. S. Harris and W. Cerf (Albany: SUNY
Press, 1977), 60-62
59 J. Derrida, "De I'economie restreinte a I'econornie generale,"
Ilecriture et la difference, 381, cf. 380l"From Restricted to General
Economy," Writing and Difference, 259.
60 Cf ibid., 387, 399/263, 271.
61 Derrida, Glas, 250al223a; cf. also "Hors livre," La dissemination,
12 n5I"Outwork," Dissemination, 6-7 n8. Hegel remarks with respect
to the conflicts which constitute tragic plots that the ethical substance,
in order to actualize itself, must occur in the element of mundane
appearance: "Now owing to the nature of this element, the mere
difference, when taken up by specific characters on the basis of specific
circumstances, must overturn into opposition and collision" (Aesth III,
523/II, 1196, translation modified). Hegel here refers to the difference
between the many gods that are the subject matter of Greek myths
and the transformation of this plurality into a duality of ethical values
in tragedy; only when these values or substances are brought to lift} as
the pathos of specific heroes can they-and the heroes with them-
become opposed to each other so that their one-sidedness will finally
destroy itself. This means for Hegel that the force of the pure concept
only emerges in tragedies, and not yet in myths (cf Phen 484/449).
62 "So it is not certain that something more or different from Hegel
is being said, that something more or different from what he himself
read is being read when the word castration and other similar things
are put forward. It is not certain that one conceptually intervenes in
his logic. To do that, ... one would have to make visible forces resistant
to the Aufhebung, to the process of truth, to speculative negativity, and
as well that these forces of resistance do not constitute in their turn
relievable or relieving negativities. In sum a remainrs) that may not
be without being nothingness: a remains that may (not) be. That is not
easy. From the viewpoint of the concept, it is foreseeable impossible....
One must question the order of the concept" (Derrida, Glas, 53a/43-
44a.) In "Difference und autonome Negation: Derridas Hegel-Lekture,"
M. Frank undertakes a reconstruction of Derrida's relation to Hegel by
showing how much Derrida's concept of differance is indebted to
Hegel's concept of negativity as developed in the Science of Logic.
Insofar as Frank's analysis mainly stresses the structural similarities
between the two concepts, I would claim that he only prepares the
ground for the inquiry into the radical difference between Hegel and
Derrida. Frank briefly suggests that Derrida, in maintaining the view

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that a trace of nonidentity is not surmountable in self-reflection, must

remain caught in the oppositional schemes developed in Hegel's
Doctrine of Essence and thus fails to reach the truly speculative
perspective (462). I would argue against Frank that Derrida's thinking
cannot be reduced to one of the different modes of thinking Hegel
offers in his Logik. Cf. M. Frank, "Differance und autonome Negation:
Derridas Hegel-Lekttire," in Das Sagbare und das Unsagbare
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993 2 ) , 446-470.

357